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Last year I built a Lacewood V2 and mounted a line stage, tone stack preamp on top. The line stage, tone stack preamp had its own power supply so I could put it in front of other amplifiers, should I want to.A friend would like me to build him an all in one unit. The power supply for the Lacewood V2 has a Hammond 270FX transformer and the 6.3v filament winding is rated at 5A. The total filament draw for the Lacewood V2 plus the two 12AU7s' needed for the tone stack preamp is 2.325A so I am well within limits. My question is, will the 150mA rating for the H.T. be enough for the Lacewood V2 and the tone stack preamp? I'm sure I read somewhere in this thread that the Lacewood V2 draws just under 1A.(Note: I use a Hammond 370FX, as here in Spain I have 230V mains supply).

My question is, will the 150mA rating for the H.T. be enough for the Lacewood V2 and the tone stack preamp?

Yes. The Lacewood V2 draws about 86mA for both channels. The preamp will only draw a handful more.

The bigger issues of which to be aware is that you need to be very careful that the preamp and power amp legs of the power supply have good filter isolation. Otherwise you could run into issues. In general this means an extra stage of power supply filtering for the preamp.

Seperate diodes or valve rectifiers can be used to fully isolate the voltage ripple from the power amp and pre amp high voltage supply.Two diodes or 4 depending on transformer used for power amp, then directly from the same transformer ac rails you have another 2-4 diodes in parallel but the dc output is isolated and connected to its own filtering capacitor for pre amp section.

I did this is a +-12v hybrid pre amp I designed and fully isolated the buck converter from the +-12v rails.EDIT: Buck converter for valve heater, as easiest way to get locked on 6.3v and can run heatsinkless with 1.2A output buying just cheapest ones from aliexpress

It can be done as easily as that but ILoveHiFi is correct; you need to calculate the drop. The tone stack preamp with cathode follower maxes out at about 7mA for two channels. Assuming a 20kΩ dropper would give a drop of about 140v (20000Ωx0.007A) which is far too large. You would want to shoot for about 40v or so. This would indicate a resistance of about 40v/0.007A ≈ 5.7kΩ (5.6kΩ is a standard value). If you wanted to separate the preamp channels then the current drops in half and the resistance doubles.

The 5.6kΩ/47µf cap pair yields about 44dB of ripple isolation at 100Hz ripple frequency (2x50Hz). If you separated the preamp supplies left and right, the current halves and the resistor should be doubled to 11.2kΩ (11.5kΩ s a standard value) This filter stage (i.e. 11.5kΩ/47µf) would yield about 51dB of ripple isolation.

Either one of these solutions should be more than acceptable.

Just make sure you watch for all the normal pitfalls (ground loops and such). This is a complicated build. Use a BIG chassis.

With the 2.7kΩ/47µf stage you get about 38dB of ripple isolation. With the other filter stage isolation to the drivers (20kΩ/47µf, ≈55dB @100Hz) and the large final capacitor at the power stages (100µf, Xc≈16Ω @100Hz) this should be sufficient to give very clean power to the preamp and to inhibit B+ feedback.

Thanks for your time Matt. I don't understand how you calculate ripple isolation, nor how to inhibit B+ feedback.I think I'll leave those questions for a later date. Just happy to say I've learnt something today.

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